POETRY

POETRY

THE USUAL SUSPECTS

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read1.4K views

When I was younger corrupt public servants

were always some sort of foreign Johnny –

like the chief of police in ‘Casablanca’ –

and events like Covid-19 the result

of utterly unique and totally

unforeseen circumstances not neglect,

incompetence or insouciance,

much less deliberate mayhem.

 

Now the malfeasance is in plain sight.

The crooks in all but name – public school boys

and their acolytes of all classes

and genders, the useful idiots,

the ready sycophants, the gong-chasers,

the jacks-in-office, and their main stream

media apologists and enablers –

are the same entitled class that purloined

the so-called Elgin Marbles, and had away

with the Benin Bronzes, and murdered

Iraqi Kurds and Kenyan Kikuyu.

 

Now that, for the masters and the mistresses

of the universe, self-righteousness

is justification enough for greed

and thievery, and self-interest

and the public good are one – unless

you are in receipt of so-called benefits

obviously. So those who, consequently,

die or are maimed are always undeserving

and dispensable. Thus, by default,

Aristotle’s Great Chain of Being

appears not only intact but well-oiled,

the concept of choice of the Establishment –

that exclusive sui generis elite.

 

 

 

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POETRY

A PIECEMEAL CRISIS

David Selzer By David Selzer2 Comments1 min read1.8K views

We were nearly two months into spring, only

moments away from summer, and yet, yet,

though three swifts had returned from Africa,

though a pair of ungainly wood pigeons

courted in a neighbour’s gutter, though there were

hot days perfumed with plants and bee laden,

wintry winds from the north harried clouds south,

and the sparrows were hesitant to lay,

the laburnum reluctant to unfurl

its golden curlicues. The Four Horsemen

are coming, not at a canter but

crabwise in dressage. Armageddon

is approaching, not with a bang and a flash

but little by little.

 

Note: This piece has also been published in EXTERMINATING ANGEL PRESS THE MAGAZINE.

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

THE SHIP OF THESEUS AND THE HOUSE OF WINDSOR

David Selzer By David Selzer5 Comments2 min read2.9K views

Theseus, with the help of Ariadne,

daughter of Minos, King of Crete, slew

the Minotaur – that creature with a bull’s head

and a man’s body – in the labyrinth

which imprisoned him. They rescued the fourteen

noble youths and maidens of Athens,

sacrificial tribute, who had been food

for the Minotaur. With the princess

and the young people, Theseus escaped

from Crete and sailed his trireme to Athens.

(En route he left Ariadne on Naxos,

for reasons which need not detain us here).

 

The Athenians, in gratitude for saving

the scions of their nobility, revered

the ship in which they had returned, maintained it

for many centuries – replacing

rotten timber, frayed rope, and torn canvas.

Inevitably, this being Ancient Greece,

a problem arose, and persists even now,

of a philosophical nature:

at what point, if any, does the Ship of

Theseus cease to be Theseus’ ship?

 

Thomas Hobbes – sometime mathematics tutor

to Charles, Prince of Wales, later Charles II –

and most famous for opining, during

the havoc of the English Civil War,

that life in anything other than

a comprehensive autocracy

would be ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish

and short’ – posed an interesting what if

regarding The Ship of Theseus.

 

Imagine that, instead of recycling

the redundant parts for, say, fuel,

they had been made the responsibility

of a custodian, who rebuilt the ship

following the original blueprint,

so that, in time, there would have been two vessels,

both from the original design,

one from the original materials –

and the latter, Hobbes concluded, might still

properly be identified as

The Ship of Theseus. Some, however,

may think the issue of identity

irrelevant, one ship being seaworthy,

the other a tad dystopian –

which brings me neatly to the House of Windsor

aka Saxe-Coburg und Gotha, aka

Hanover, Stuart, Tudor etcetera.

 

Proper names belong, are unique, confer,

confirm, create identity: Ariadne

of Naxos, the Minotaur of Knossos –

who, by the way, were siblings, but that tale

is for another day. So, to Charles III,

tax dodger, and ersatz Renaissance man:

who seems unlike his gaudy namesakes –

the father, who spectacularly lost his head;

the son, something of a stage door Johnny –

except both his predecessors also believed

they had been anointed by God himself,

and were similarly obsessed with worldly wealth.

He can trace his line to Alfred the Great,

King of the Anglo-Saxons, and Kenneth

MacAlpin, King of the Picts. All of which is

as insubstantial and insignificant

as an imagined splinter from the deck

of some mythical ship.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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POETRY

ON THE RWANDA PLAN

David Selzer By David Selzer3 Comments2 min read2.1K views

One of the things that demonstrates how we are

a cut above lesser animals, even

our closest, primate cousins – in addition,

of course, to double entry bookkeeping –

is our ability to plan and manage

projects: like fox hunting and the Pyramids.

 

However, we should never forget

‘of mice and men’, ‘betwixt cup and lip’,

and ‘unintended consequences’ – like

throngs of tourists and urban foxes.

And take, for example, some of the proffered

solutions by European Powers

to the so-called ‘Jewish question’: Britain’s

Balfour Declaration, and the two

Madagascar Plans in the ’30s – the first

was Franco-Polish, the second German.

 

The first plan involved the voluntary

re-settlement of thousands of Polish Jews

in the island of Madagascar,

then a French colony; the second,

following the fall of France, the enforced

migration of all European Jews

to act as hostages to ensure their

‘racial comrades in America’ behaved.

Both proved unfeasible – the former

because of climate and poor infrastructure,

and the latter because, having lost

the Battle of Britain, the Nazis

abandoned the invasion of the UK.

The requisitioned British Merchant Fleet

was to have shipped the Jews to the island.

 

As the forces of the Third Reich conquered

Eastern Europe and entered Russia

a new plan developed: to move the Jews

and the Slavs to Siberia, to starve

or be murdered. When the Soviets refused

to be defeated the Final Solution

to that inadmissible question –

Die Endlösung der Judenfrage –

was devised: the building of gas chambers

at Auschwitz, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek,

Sobibor, Treblinka.

 

 

 

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POETRY

‘DARKWATERS’, TATE LIVERPOOL, 2023

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment2 min read2.5K views

‘High in the tower, where I sit above the loud complaining of the human sea, I know many souls that toss and whirl and pass, but none there are that intrigue me more than the Souls of White Folk.’

‘The Souls Of White Folk’, DARKWATER, W.E.B.Dubois, 1920

 

Much of the stone and brick of this city – built

along the river’s shore and the low hills

rising from it – was made from sugarcane

and cotton, cut from the backs of African

slaves, like much of the fortunes of England.

 

The Victorian dockside buildings have been

reengineered into apartments; gift shops;

eateries; a museum dedicated

to international slavery;

and one of four Tate art galleries,

named for Henry Tate, sugar magnate,

who endowed the first one in London,

then capital of a world wide empire

powered by subjugation and thievery.

 

Each of the upper floors of the gallery

has kept the original, large, multi-paned

windows of the dockside warehouse, masked

as needed for exhibitions. The one

I am standing at faces west, down river,

towards Ireland, the Atlantic, the New World.

I can see the mouth of the estuary,

the beginnings of Liverpool Bay –

and imagine the molasses factory,

not far downstream, the Luftwaffe turned

to rubble, buckled girders and treacle.

 

On the walls and display boards behind me

are works from the Tate’s Turner collection:

sketches and water colours and oils of things

maritime – of turbulent seas lit

by a bright almost harsh opalescence.

Two of Lamin Fontana’s audio

installations are playing on a loop –

music and voices; the sounds of servitude,

pain and longing, immersed in the oceans.

 

Three thousand miles or more west south west

in Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts

is Turner’s THE SLAVE SHIP, originally

entitled SLAVERS THROWING OVERBOARD

THE DEAD AND DYING—TYPHOON COMING ON.

The background is the storm approaching

against a romantic sunset of

violent orange; the middle ground

a top-sail schooner, sails furled, buffeted

by the unquiet seas; foregrounded are white birds

in flight, black manacled limbs sinking, black hands

briefly above the tumultuous waves.

 

 

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POETRY

IN DEFENCE OF WHATABOUTERY

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read1.5K views

There have been three anniversaries of note

so far this year: the first of the invasion

of Ukraine by the Russian Federation;

the twentieth of the invasion of Iraq

by the US, UK, Australia

and Poland; the fifty fifth of the My Lai

Massacre, the murder of five hundred

and two Vietnamese men, women, children –

all civilians – by a company

of American GIs. Aggressors

seem always only too able and willing

to justify such sociopathic

behaviour with self-serving casuistry

both before and after the fact. Remember

Oradour-sur-Glane; Amritsar; the

Armenian Massacres; Wounded Knee;

Alexander the Great destroying Thebes;

the Ancient Romans’ sacking Carthage

and killing tens of thousands; and Elisha,

on his way into the city of Bethel,

being met by a large group of little children,

who mocked him because of his bald head,

so he cursed them in the name of the Lord,

and two she-bears, emerging from a nearby wood,

tore forty two of the children to pieces.

 

 

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